The exonerees in the Broadview 6 case have filed their reply bid for sanctions on prosecutors. It might be summarized as saying, “Holy shit! Andrew Boutros introduced tons of new information in his response and all that new information is cause for further investigation.”
That’s particularly true with regards to Boutros’ disclosure, in footnote 15, that the day after the charged incident, there was a meeting with Main Justice at which a video from the incident was shown.
Here’s what that confession, with its context, looked like in Boutros’ response, which (as I’ll return to) was submitted on August 4, after a delay:
Separately, as the Supreme Court recently held, “[i]nvestigative and prosecutorial decisionmaking is ‘the special province of the Executive Branch,’” and so even the “President may discuss potential investigations and prosecutions with his Attorney General and other Justice Department officials to carry out his constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593, 620 (2024) (quotations and citations omitted). Thus, members of the Executive Branch are constitutionally required to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” and it is entirely appropriate for them to “decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute.” Id. (quoting U.S. Const. Art. II, § 3). Although the Supreme Court in 2024 made clear that the law permits such interactions, as already noted and consistent with Department policy, in this matter, the United States Attorney reported the Office’s charging decision to Main Justice shortly before the first grand jury presentation in this case. R. 110 at 4, n.2.1 any other intra-agency or interagency communications, including those with other individuals in Main Justice or federal law enforcement, because the law disallows their access to such communications both as a matter of separation of powers and privilege.
15 On July 15, 2026, counsel for one of the former Defendants sent an email to the U.S. Attorney’s Office asking whether the Office “still stands” behind its assertion that there were “no communications” “with anyone outside the USAO” regarding “who and what to charge” or its “investigatory or charging decisions.” R. 110 at 3 (bold in original, italics added). The Front Office is not aware of any communications in which it took direction from anyone outside the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding its decisions as to what investigatory steps the local prosecution team would take or who the local prosecution team would charge when prosecutors went into the grand jury to indict this case. [1] Out of an abundance of caution, the Office notes there was a virtual meeting on September 27, 2025, among Main Justice lawyers, the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office, lawyers from at least one other U.S. Attorney’s Office on the West Coast, and many federal law enforcement agencies where the September 26 “Broadview” incident was mentioned (and a public video played) as part of a broader discussion of incidents and conduct against ICE during that time. To the Front Office’s knowledge, the virtual meeting did not mention the identity or political affiliation of any person. It was only later when Chicago FBI agents assigned to the case began investigating the matter that the Office learned the identity of some of the people involved in the incident. [2] Moreover, as would be expected in the normal course, there were discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates, especially given the publicity the case generated after it had been charged. These privileged discussions are not only permitted but are contemplated. See supra 19; In re United States, 398 F.3d at 618 (“How the United States reaches its litigating positions, who said what to whom within the prosecutor’s office, and so on, are for the Attorney General and the President to evaluate. The Judicial Branch is limited to assessing counsel’s public deeds.”). [my numbers]
Boutros first invoked — for the first time I’m aware — the part of Trump v. US newly granting the President’s prerogative to intervene in specific prosecutions, then said any communications about such intervention would be privileged, and in a footnote, confessed that there had been such communications. He confessed to two kinds of communication: [1] The September 27 meeting and [2] “discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates.”
Exonerees raise this confession on page 2 of their Reply, and describe their sustained attempt to get a real response to the question about what communications there were.
The fact that there is more yet to be uncovered here becomes obvious when one looks at the government’s verbally contorted responses to the simple question that is yet to be answered here: “Were there communications between DOJ officials and this U.S. Attorney’s Office about this prosecution beyond the sole video conference the government (belatedly) disclosed in its Response brief?”2
In response to that very simple question, a well-respected AUSA who filed an appearance in the case subsequent to the case’s implosion in late May that she was now the lead attorney on this case. yet when asked about details regarding certain representations made by the government, particularly regarding communications with Main Justice, her default answer was to consult the Front Office. This includes questions about the government’s carefully crafted and potentially misleading statement in its Response brief that
“The Front Office is not aware of any communications in which it took direction from anyone outside the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding it decisions as to what investigatory steps the local prosecution team would take or who the local prosecution team would charge when prosecutors went into the grand jury to indict this case.” Dkt. 247, p. 41, footnote 15 (emphasis added). The insertion of the word “direction,” seems intended to provide a clever, subjective escape hatch from the candor and transparency promised by the U.S. Attorney and desperately needed to identify and address the scope of false or misleading statements that have been made to the Court in this case. [red emphasis added]
2 In its Response brief, the government disclosed for the first time that on September 27, 2025—the day after Agent A drove his SUV into Defendants and other protestors—there was, in fact, a meeting involving the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office and others, including Main Justice lawyers, where this case was discussed and a video of the incident was shown.
They accuse DOJ of “evading disclosure” about Main Justice’s role in the case a few pages later, raise the meeting again on the next page, then suggest the outside influence at that meeting (including, potentially, that of Mike Davis, who they show has had a thing about Kat Abughazaleh for years) may have led to the misconduct on the case. Then in the body of the argument, they include a four-page section laying out how Boutros’ confession concedes that DOJ made a misleading comment in the filing in which prosecutors successfully defeated exonerees’ motion to compel.
Defense counsel made repeated requests to government counsel and in court filings for communications with individuals outside the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois, including Main Justice and the White House. The government cites in its Response the Court’s denial of defendants’ Motion to Compel, and quotes select comments made by the Court at the time this Motion was denied. Noticeably absent from this portion of the government’s brief, however, are the representations made to the Court by the government upon which the Court relied as the basis for its ruling.
Defense counsel specifically requested “records and communications relating to any improper influence exerted upon the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Northern District of Illinois[.]” Dkt. 94 at 1. In response, the government lambasted defense counsel for making such a request and unequivocally stated that “there are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside the USAO (other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case) regarding any investigatory or charging decisions. To be crystal clear, this specifically includes anyone in the White House and all components and offices of Main Justice.” Dkt. 110, pp. 3- 4 (bold and italics added).
The Court, without any correction from the government, summarized the government’s position at hearing on April 7, 2026 and specifically relied on the government’s representation in denying Defendants’ motion:
The defendants have expressly predicated their theory of vindictive and selective prosecution on external forces having some type of impact on the Chicago-based prosecutors….To [that] end, the prosecutors agreed to provide evidence of external forces communicating with the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office about this case, and they have now said there is no such evidence. There are no White House communications, there are no Main Justice communications, and I quote, “there are no communications in any nature from, to, or with anyone outside of the U.S. Attorney’s Office[.]
4/7/2026 Tr., p. 6. (emphasis added). This quoted representation from the government now seems to be in serious doubt. Indeed, it is flatly inconsistent with the revelation in the government’s Response that there was, in fact, at least one meeting with DOJ officials about this case and the video evidence. In addition, despite multiple prior representations to the contrary, the government in its Response now adds for the first time, “as would be expected in the normal course, there were discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates, especially given the publicity the case generated after it had been charged.” Dkt. 247, p. 41.8
8 Defendants do not suggest that there is anything inherently wrong had the USAO conferred with Main Justice on this case (or any other matter). Here, this information was requested for a very specific purpose, i.e., to obtain necessary evidence to establish a vindictive prosecution and/or claim of improper influence regarding the charges. Instead of candidly stating that there were, in fact, communications, the government repeatedly and adamantly represented to the Court that “there are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside the USAO” about this case. (Dkt. 110, pp. 3-4). [links added]
To sum up so far: Exonerees remind Judge April Perry that back in March, having failed to get such communications to that point, they formally asked for details of communications between the Chicago US Attorney’s Office and Main Justice or the White House. In a response signed by William Hogan, he called the premise “reckless but completely false,” and stated quite clearly that [and here exonerees clip the quote], “Accordingly, there are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside the USAO (other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case) regarding any investigatory or charging decisions.” Then Judge Perry relied on that representation in denying discovery about such communications, only to have Boutros confess to two kinds of communications — the meeting on September 27 and “discussions between the Office and Main Justice regarding such things as case updates, especially given the publicity the case generated after it had been charged.”
To support this discussion, exonerees include the email chain they had with Diane MacArthur — the AUSA they describe as “well-respected,” which I’ve marked in red, above — on this point. I’m sure the connotation of that reference, “well-respected,” will be immediately apparent to Judge Perry, who worked as an AUSA in this office until 2016. Chicagoans who have nothing to do with this case have effectively said to me, Diane MacArthur is on the case. She’s the one person who will always have credibility.
Except it’s not clear whether she is on the case any longer, and exonerees lay out that they had a tough time getting a straight answer to this question, even from MacArthur.
The timing shown by the email chain is even more telling (see the timeline below). MacArthur publicly joined the case on May 22, submitting a filing objecting to a request for a preservation order, arguing that the exonerees had no standing to demand discovery. At the hearing on May 26 at which she assured Judge Perry — undoubtedly leveraging the trust everyone in Chicago has in her — that the government would retain all related communications, she said she’d be handling the case “in the future as well.” But that’s one of the last things she did publicly in the case; her sole remaining public action pertained to the release of the grand jury transcripts (as I’ll note, my concerns about the publicly released transcripts have some merit). DOJ relied on her reputation to defeat the preservation order, and then replaced her.
Even before that hearing about grand jury transcripts, on July 7, AUSA Maxwell Lisy filed a notice of appearance, but the only thing he did publicly was to submit a filing addressing the government’s stance on paying defense attorney’s fees. Then on July 1, Nathaniel Whalen filed his notice of appearance, asking — citing his new involvement in the case — for two extra weeks to do the Response brief. In the meantime, Andrew Martin’s attorney, Terence Campbell, started nagging MacArthur about whether DOJ stands by the things it said in the March 30 filing.
Campbell’s email is the one to which footnote 15 is specifically addressed.
Whalen asked for another extension. Campbell called, then emailed, MacArthur again, laying out the scope of comms that should be considered. Whalen submitted DOJ’s response, on which he is the only AUSA with Boutros, which purports to address Campbell’s July 15 email, but did not address whether a correction will be forthcoming. On August 11, Campbell tried again, noting their impending Reply deadline — his fourth request for clarity on this point. MacArthur responded, saying that she has given his two prior communications to the Front Office (which seems to confirm she was not involved in the Response at all) and footnote 15 addresses them, which Campbell pointed out includes a hedge about “direction.” The next day, Abughazaleh’s attorney asked for a 2-week extension. Days later, MacArthur replied. Even though Boutros confessed to two kinds of communications in footnote 15, the meeting and things like case updates, MacArthur relayed that they now say there is just one.
To the best of their knowledge, there is one communication described in FN 15, a virtual meeting that took place on September 27, 2025, but the Front Office does not consider that virtual meeting to be a direction.
On August 17, Campbell asked again and noted that he had asked her to do a search. There is no response included in the exhibit. On August 27, he asked for a 2-week extension, leading up to yesterday’s filing, which among other things asked whether the grand jury transcript Boutros received on October 14 got sent to anyone outside Chicago.
This sequence of events raises further questions:
- What prompted ordering of the transcript? At whose direction was this done?
- Who sent the grand jury transcript to Mr. Boutros and what was their reason for doing so?
- What was the message on the email in which the transcript was forwarded to Mr. Boutros?
- Did Mr. Boutros specifically request the grand jury transcript?
- What other supervisory or front office employees were copied on the email or otherwise received a copy of the transcript?
- What other supervisory or front office employees read the transcript of what occurred in the grand jury and when?
- Was that October 9, 2025 transcript forwarded to anyone outside the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois?
- Did Mr. Boutros read the transcript of the grand jury proceeding before consulting with Chief Judge Kendall and seeking her assistance in addressing issues with the grand jurors who voiced strong disagreement with the government’s case?
- How could Mr. Boutros credibly claim not reading the transcript of the initial proceeding before making an important informed decision about whether to overrule the initial decision of the grand jury who listened to the evidence presented?
Sending the rush grand jury transcript to Aakash Singh and being ordered to present it anew might be considered a case update, the kind of communication Boutros confessed to in footnote 15 but subsequently denied.
The whole timeline hints that either MacArthur (and possibly even Maxwell Lisy, the other AUSA who filed an appearance) was asked to do something she refused to do, or they sidelined her knowing she would be more honest than Boutros was in his Response.
Back in the March 30 reply (the one that exonerees now suggest merits correction) William Hogan blustered that if exonerees’ suspicions were confirmed — if DOJ had decided to target Kat Abughazaleh and people who she was with because she was legally protesting — then that would amount to a crime, a conspiracy against rights.
[D]efendants’ Motion to Compel is premised solely on unsupported accusations that are not only reckless but completely false. Defendants directly claim that the indictment in this case is the product of external political influence and unconstitutional political charging considerations that have been “exerted upon the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois” (USAO) by unknown persons in the White House and/or the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, D.C. (Main Justice).1 The unavoidable conclusions to be drawn from these accusations is that the four line Assistant United States Attorneys ( AUSAs) who have been assigned to this case and their supervisors who reviewed and approved the indictment, including the Front Office, have not only acted in bad faith but have committed prosecutorial misconduct. Indeed, defendants would necessarily have this Court—and the public—believe that these prosecutors purposefully and consciously engaged in a conspiracy to violate the defendants’ constitutional rights by targeting them for selective and vindictive prosecution for exercising those rights.
1 “Defendants request that the government produce discovery to support a motion to dismiss for vindictive or selective prosecution, particularly records and communications relating to related to (sic) any improper influence exerted upon the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Illinois that . . . led to their selection of the four remaining defendants for federal prosecution because of their protest activities and/or their outspoken opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts.” Motion at 1; see also Motion at 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 19, 21, 22, and 23 for similar unsupported allegations that the government prosecutors possess such “discovery” and demanding its production.
That’s the bluster Hogan used to defeat the original request for these communications.
And now, after Boutros confessed there were such communications, even the most-respected AUSA in Chicago looks determined to parse her way out of the known facts.
Timeline
May 22: MacArthur files a notice of appearance in this case and files the single filing she made in the case, stating that Brian Straw’s request for a preservation order should be denied because he has no standing to seek it and besides, the government will retain records under the Federal Records Act.
Defendant Straw’s motion should be denied as he has no standing to seek discovery due to the Court’s dismissal of all pending charges in this matter. As a result of the dismissal, any future contempt proceeding would be for criminal contempt, not civil contempt. See Kienle v. Jewel Tea Co., 222 F.2d 98, 99–100 (7th Cir. 1955) (citations omitted). Any parties to the dismissed action, other than the alleged contemner, are not proper parties to the contempt proceeding. Id., 222 F.3d at 100. The requested order is also unnecessary as the government will maintain its records as it is required to do under the Federal Records Act, 44 U.S.C. § 3101 et seq.
May 26: MacArthur appears in a hearing regarding the preservation order — in which she raises questions about whether the records of people at Main DOJ would be included in a preservation order — and represents that she will be on the case “in the future as well.”
MS. MAC ARTHUR: Good morning, Your Honor. Diane MacArthur on behalf of the United States. And, Your Honor, I’ll be appearing on behalf of the government in this proceeding and then in the future as well.
THE COURT: Thank you for volunteering as tribute.
June 8: Maxwell Lisy files a notice of appearance.
June 9: MacArthur appears at hearing pertaining to release of grand jury transcripts.
June 30: Kat Abughazaleh attorney Josh Herman emails MacArthur and all other defense attorneys regarding release of grand jury exhibits (this email will become the discussion about other communications).
July 1: Nathaniel Whalen files a notice of appearance and asks for a 2-week extension on filing response, to July 21, citing (in part), “additional time will also be needed for appropriate review,” without explaining by whom.
The undersigned Assistant United States Attorney is helping prepare the Government’s response to those motions. Since he was not part of the trial team, he has needed time to review all the relevant materials while also researching the issues raised by the various pending motions. Given the motions’ subject matters, additional time will also be needed for appropriate review.
July 7: Lisy files a response to motion for Hyde Act payments.
July 15: Andre Martin attorney Terence Campbell asks MacArthur whether DOJ still stands by assertions made in March 30 filing.
July 16: Whalen asks for a second 2-week extension on filing response, to August 4, offering the same excuse.
Roughly July 20: Phone conversation between Campbell and MacArthur regarding communications (referenced in later email).
July 27: Campbell emails laying out scope of communications that should be searched for pertinent communications.
August 4: Whalen moves to file oversize brief and, the same day, files the response; he is the only person to sign the filing with Andrew Boutros, and both sign it digitally.
August 11: Campbell follows-up about communications. MacArthur responds, stating that the response is in the Response at footnote 15. Campbell notes that that footnote pertains only to “direction.”
August 12: Herman asks for 2-week extension on reply.
August 14: MacArthur relays that Front Office claims there is only that one communication, which they do not consider “direction.”
August 17: Campbell asks whether there are any more communications and whether MacArthur has done a search for such things. There is no response included.
August 27: Campbell asks for second 2-week extension.
September 15: Exonerees submit Reply.
> the grand jury transcript Boutros received on October 14 got sent to
This line seems like it got cut off.
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Think I fixed it. Better?
Anyway, thanks.
Pro Tip for lawyers specifically and scholars more generally: *Always* read the footnotes.
Footnotes are the “show your work” part of scholarly writing, just as links do in online writing. Sometimes they are merely “here’s where I got that” stuff with citations to cases — but you can check the citation to see if they got it right. If you know enough legal history, you can smell when a citation is off (“What? They claim that something in Youngstown supports unlimited, unchecked executive authority? I gotta check this out.”) Citations where the cases referenced actually say the opposite of what the brief’s author claims are rare, but when they happen, that case and perhaps their career is over.
Other times, footnotes are where the knives come out. This might happen in the footnotes, so as not to derail the overall argument of the brief, but make no mistake: this is where a lot of real legal blood is spilled. Sometimes, it is snark aimed at the hypocrisy or silliness of an opponent’s position, and other times — like here — it’s where the flaws in the opponent’s arguments are dissected for all to see. The claim might be in the main text, and the dissection is in the footnote.
Read. The. Footnotes.
Yes. I have often found in legal footnotes the answer to my (ever-present) question, “But what do you *really* think?”
“Citations where the cases referenced actually say the opposite of what the brief’s author claims are rare, but when they happen, that case and perhaps their career is over.”
You would hope that would be the case, but I’ve actually found misuse of citations to be dismayingly common. I find that especially common where the argument is by analogy – “look at this case over here – it’s just like ours, and it came out like we want here.”
I had a recent case where my opponent said something like: “In X v. Y, 999 F.3d 999, the facts were very similar to those here, and the court declined to exercise jurisdiction because of statutory section ABC.” When you go to look it up, you find out that the court did indeed decline to exercise jurisdiction, but that was based on statutory section DEF, and the court actually said it *would* have had jurisdiction under ABC.
My experience with this type of mischaracterization of the authorities is not limited to small firms. I’ve seen the same thing from some of the biggest firms in the business. I’ve seen flat out mischaracterizations of the *holding* of a case and straight citations (without any parenthetical explanation) for a proposition where the case appears to have little to do with the point being asserted.
This, of course, makes for excellent fodder in the reply, but I’ve never seen anything happen to attorneys who do it.
A well respected Diane ground down:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNHePv-l7MY
Kinks – A Well Respected Man
Let’s go and drink to the (political, not literal) death of a clown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coCjlhyFug8
I’d add two words in here: “. . . the most-respected AUSA in Chicago looks determined TO TRY to parse her way out . . .”
Good luck with that, Ms. MacArthur. You might be better off as Queen for a Day, because otherwise you are going to twist slowly, slowly in the wind (to borrow a phrase).
The number of actions without an actor (e.g. a meeting took place and “a video of the incident was shown”) and the number of “that never happened” followed by much later “except the perfectly normal multiple times it did happen” are truly amazing. Not to mention the not answering the question by redefining it (“Did anyone in the USAO…” No one in the Front Office..
These people are so obviously lying by omission that’s hard to take anything they say as the truth. If Andrew Boutros told me it was raining, I wouldn’t believe him even if I went outside and got soaking wet.
‘ “…there are no communications of any nature from, to, or with anyone outside the USAO (other than the local FBI investigators assigned to the case) regarding any investigatory or charging decisions.” Then Judge Perry relied on that representation in denying discovery” ‘
Is this another fraud on the court?